Controlling the initial viewpoint of your panorama

When you display your panorama in a web page, you can control the initial view direction and.zoom of the panorama. In addition, you can set the initial viewpoint to different places using the #bookmark notation on the URL of the web page that displays the panorama.

Setting the default viewpoint
Setting the initial viewpoint

Setting the default viewpoint

To set the default initial viewpoint, you make a special hotspot on the panorama. Using the Hotspot properties dialog box, draw a hotspot that covers the area that you want to display in the viewer. The smallest rectangle that encloses the hotspot will expand to fill the viewer. A smaller area will zoom in and a larger area will zoom out.

To make a hotspot set the initial viewpoint, select the This hotspot is the default view checkbox on the Hotspot properties dialog box. This will cause the viewer to zoom, pan and tilt to show the area of the hotspot. If you select the Set tilt angle to zero checkbox, the hotspot will still set pan and zoom, but the tilt angle will be set to zero so that the viewer will be looking straight ahead. This usually provides a more natural view than tilting up or down, but the zoom factor may be reduced automatically to achieve this view.

NOTE: The initial viewpoint setting is performed by JavaScript statements added to the HTML web page. This means that the person viewing the panorama must have JavaScript enabled in their browser. If JavaScript is disabled, the initial viewpoint setting is ignored.

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Setting the initial viewpoint

When enter a page from different places, it may be desirable to set the initial viewpoint differently depending upon where you come from. If you can enter a room through different doors, you may want the initial to face away from the door you entered. For example, you might enter the Living Room from either the Kitchen or the Dining Room.

To control the viewpoint this way, create a different hotspot for each initial viewpoint. Then select This hotspot is also a bookmark for each hotspot. Give each hotspot a different name. For example, if your panorama is in the Living Room, you might name two hotspots from_kitchen and from_dr for the views you want to show when entering from the Kitchen web page and from the Dining Room web page. Then when you create the hyperlink that leads to the Living Room page from the Kitchen page, set its Bookmark to from_kitchen and when you create the hyperlink that leads to the Living Room page from the Dining Room page, set its Bookmark to from_dr.

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